Draft Bonus Notes: Appel, Garcia

Here are some updates on the demands of various draftees as day two of the 2012 first year player draft continues (click here for more of MLBTR’s notes on the draft):

First rounder Mark Appel and his representatives at the Boras Corporation turned down a $6MM offer from the Astros, Tom Krasovic of Inside the Padres reports. The right-hander had been a possible first overall selection, but the Astros decided to takeCarlos Correa instead. The Pirates selected Appel eighth overall, which means his recommended bonus is $2.9MM — presumably much less than his asking price. Keith Law of ESPN.com notes that no offer was made by the Astros (Twitter link).

The Dodgers selected Onelkis Garcia in the third round (113th overall) and while the Cuban left-hander has said he’s looking for a $7MM bonus, he won’t get one, according to Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus (on Twitter).

The Pirates dun goofed? If this guy is going to stick by 6M, it will be good riddance I guess. He could be a big time prospect but I think it would probably make more sense to sign guys 2-10 instead of hedging all their bets on one player. I think a slotting system would have made more sense than these budgets if players just have unrealistic expectations anyways. Hopefully I’m proven wrong.

I said this somewhere else this morning: tell Boras the contract signings start Monday morning and when the money runs out they end, first come, first served. Then whip up a couple early mid-rounders to tighten the budget a bit. If he holds out just say 2 first rounders in in 2013 is better than 1 in 2102 and nothing in 2013, then start trickling the late round signings to shorten the budget some more. He’ll act quickly or shut things down, but there’s no way he can somehow spin extra money for Appel PLUS lost picks in 2013 as a good scenario for the team. They haven’t got enough budget to make it work once any other early pick signs.

Boras is still just advising him Pat. Possibly the Buccos can talk some sense into the kid’s parents and remind them this cap is going to be in place another 5 seasons and Boras’s smoke and mirrors is just that.. There is no free market with the new CBA for draftees, or UDFA’s it seems like.. The kid will get maybe half of that with less leverage as a college senior, even if he tried playing Indy league after next year.

Boras has -0- chance of trying to pull a Varitek of JD Drew stunt here with this new slotting system in place.

The alternative is for him to not sign and go back for another year, high pitch counts, risk injury and risk being choosen even later.

The reality is, his best chance to get paid was to accept slot for the 1st overall pick, because even if everything goes right, him being picked again 1st round next year isnt going to get him that much more. Boras really did a terrible job in advising this kid.

I think they will. Rio Ruiz, Nolan Fontana, and Lance McCullers Jr.(I saw him going in mocks as early as #11) won’t come cheap.

If Appel fell out of the top 3, he *probably* should’ve been picked by a team that had lots of extra picks and thus a big draft pool, and could cheap out the extra picks with college seniors to sign him, like the Cardinals, Padres, A’s, or Blue Jays. But I still like the move for the Pirates.

The Astros are also under new ownership and management, so who knows what they’ll do.

The changes to the draft were made to contain spending on new players, not help cheap teams spend more. But I think HOU is going to do fine here. It sounds like they got their #1 on the cheap, so they can probably afford a couple later splurges like McCullers. It’ll average out and they’ll pay what amounts to the new lower market rate for a bunch of good talent.

Hypothetically, not that I am suggesting that he should do this (I think it would hurt him more than help), but if Appel didn’t sign this year, gets drafted and doesn’t sign again next year, what happens? Does he become a free agent at that point?

I still find it hard to believe he won’t sign. The wiggle room for waiting another year is only a couple million dollars TOPS, and if he comes anywhere close to living up to his potential he’ll make far more than that by entering free agency one year younger. That’s on top of the risk of injury, poor performance or a stronger draft class that might not see him move up the chain at all. Unless this kid has a job offer doing something else, I can’t fathom him not signing.

Well, if there’s no way for him to escape the draft then I find it even more unlikely that he wouldn’t sign. It would have been a pretty bad idea to begin with; the fact that it doesn’t get him anything pretty well takes it entirely off the table.

You have to be kidding me! How much money does Boras need or is it about power?
What truly makes this guy tick? If Appel had accepted the deal, Correa would have fallen to the Orioles and that would have done one of two things.
Set-up a possible “World Class” Infield in 5 years with Machado, Correa, and Schoop or would have made Schoop a very valuable trade chip. I honestly don’t know if my favorite GM in the whole wide world would have drafted Correa, but it really would have been sweet. I can’t even use proper words to explain how I feel about Boras, because it probable give me a “time out” from blogging.
I can’t believe Boras materially affected the draft this way! Can Selig do anything about this? Alas, though knowing him, he won’t! =(((((

…and Josh Bell was going to college last year unless he got $8MM. What an agent wants and what a player gets are two different things. If Appel couldn’t get $6MM this year, his chances of getting it are even worse next year in a deeper talent pool and less leverage as a senior.

It’s a slightly different situation, for a number of reasons. Matsuzaka wasn’t going to make $52MM in Japan. His team did not really want him back — it wanted the $50MM+ posting fee [Seibu used it to renovate their stadium and playing grounds]. He did not have anyone else to negotiate with — his options were Boston or return to a Japanese team he was contracted to that didn’t want him back and wasn’t going to pay him any extension and hope for the best the following year. There are also vague peculiarities involving Japanese honor culture and not looking back or some such that I don’t quite understand, but exist nonetheless.

Appel is in a bit of a different situation. As far as MLB goes, he can only negotiate with the Pirates and his options are sign for what they are offering [or what he can convince them to offer] or return to school and hope for a better situation next year [where he may be drafted higher, or lower, or the slot recommendations could be different and he could also block the Pirates from selecting him again].

With the NPB angle added to the mix, Appel is free to negotiate with any of the Japanese teams who may be interested in his services. If Mark Appel wants north of $6MM dollars, it may not be impossible to convince a Japanese team to offer him say an $8MM contract over 5 years with some kind of out clause.

Don’t put this solely on Boras, as Appel and has family could have easily taken the dough. Now he has three options:

1. Take the $2.9 million and lose $3.1 million
2. Go back to college and hopefully not get hurt or be drafted lower than #8
3. Sue Bud Selig for unfair labor practices (not sure the exact legal terminology that would apply here)

While draft caps are in a sense collaboration organizations like MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, etc are legal cartels. So draft caps aren’t unfair labor practices. If the teams collaborated and agreed to only pay a free agent a certain amount then that would be illegal because it would violate the owners agreement with the players Union. But high school and college players have no Union so the owners can offer whatever they want. The players always have the right not to accept.

i have navigated to ciudad of palo alto and witness appel with these very eyes,,,, no es a 6 mil pitcher,,, but i must be ready to admit that cole, taillon, e appel combination es very mucho tantalizing

Fortunately, the new system pretty much prohibits a team from folding to his demands. The penalties are way too steep. The Pirates aren’t going to give up future first rounders. They have around a $6.6MM draft cap this year. There’s only so much over slot they can get to Appel. If if they sign a few of the 2-10 picks under slot, there still won’t be much more than $3MM for Appel. Obviously, he’s not getting anything near $6MM.

The problem for Boras and Appel is – it will be the same problem next year too. Going back for a year doesn’t really change much. He would pretty much have to be drafted #1 or #2 next year for any real significant increase in pay, and I’m not sure the risk involved is worth the extra $2-3MM.

You’re assuming Boras is making the decision here. Boras is a businessman, not an idiot. He has to do what his client demands. He could quit on the client and tell them to find a new agent, but this doesn’t really warrant that. Appel or his parents are making this demand, not Scott Boras.

Good question… maybe the new Collective Bargaining Agreement rolled some of the international players into the draft like the did with Puerto Rico in 1989. The new CBA has wording specifying international 23 and under players with limited playing time are amateurs now and limits on international amateur spending has been instituted. There was a great deal of work on international signing changes and the news about it was fairly sparse or I did not absorb all the changes forthcoming. There was a great deal of talk at CBA about a international draft… did some of that talk make into the agreement as additional international territories entering the draft?

The draft did not have the lottery picks yet either and the trading of those picks has not taken effect yet. Lot of changes coming still. Or maybe it was simply Garcia choose to enter the draft.

MLB needs to lean on the NHL system. First of all, be able to trade draft picks. Second, every draftee should not make more than x. Junior hockey players have a max for their entry-level contract. No prospect can make more than 850 000$ per year for his first three years. Maybe go with the league average by position or a min/max for 1st rounder. That way, Boras could only lobby his client’s abilities to teams in order to get the max money by being selected in the first round. So every team will take control of their draftee even if they still want to go to college (but I think it’s against the rules in NCAA to play while under contract) and no whining or no-shows..

Boras doesn’t seem to get that “the good old days” are over with. He can’t make demands like he used too and then have the team cave in to his demands. Alot of the new recommended bonus structure is because of him. Scott…..you made your bed….now lie in it.

With #1 pick Correa looking like he’ll only get $5MM, it seems like Appel has even less leverage now. How can he argue that he deserves $6MM at #8 when the #1 pick didn’t even get that. $3MM at #8 almost seems like an overpay now.

Good point. Also, most draft analyst had Buxton/ Harper as 1/2 on talent. Why overspend on a name in a weak draft when you can pocket upside and cash for future help. Appel will probably fall if he opts to come out next year, provided the draft class is stronger. I would advise to cut losses and sign up with the Bucs.

Appel’s problem is that there was no “clear cut” #1 this year. The Astros drafted someone with much more upside that is apparently “signable” and understands that the fact that there were no Strassberg or Harper in the draft elevated his position. With the number of HS kids in the top 20, Appel could very well drop out of the top ten in next year’s draft, as a new crop of youngsters make their mark.

The Astros did well with Correa, who is an absolute stud with huge upside potential, albeit possibly an extended route to the majors. Appel has questions about overuse at Stanford and mechanics that profile well with previous arm injury picks. Appel would be wise to take what he can get and sign with Pitt. The Astros pick of Correa allowed them to overspend on McCulllers, the combination of Correa/ McCullers may very well be the “steal” of the draft.

Team Boras lost this one, the MLB teams won, all of them. Both the Astros, who got a young guy for less, with great upside.

And Pirates are winners as well. Appell is screwed. If he doesn’t take the offer, and play one more year, he could injure himself. Trying to enter the draft next year, he will be up against a whole new slew of draft entries. This year he was a candidate for the #1 slot. But next year there may be a Strasburg, a Harper or perhaps a situation like last year with 5-6 legit Top prospects coming out.

Appell gambled, and lost.

More importantly, it sent an important message to everyone about Boras. And I’m sure teams are gonna let us know about it.